OF FONT & FILM: The old man in the sea

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion.”

I am my portion, as you are yours.

What is that portion?

Socrates said, “To find yourself, think for yourself.”

There is a way of being in the world –– one of integrity and nobility –– of being true to who we truly are, but it is only discovered by going within ourselves. It is sussed out in solitude and silence, in searching ourselves, in supporting and sustaining the integrity of our quiddity.

Emerson says, “These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

This is what I kept thinking of as I watched Robert Redford in J.C. Chandor’s brilliant new film “All is Lost.”

Deep into a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean, an unnamed man (Redford) wakes to find his 39-foot yacht taking on water after a collision. With his navigation equipment and radio disabled, he uses a sextant and nautical maps to chart his progress, forced to float into a shipping lane in hopes of hailing a passing vessel.

Many will see “All is Lost” as a survival film. I do not.

To me, it is not so much about survival as self-reliance, about a Emersonesque man living life on his own terms.

There’s a serenity about this old man. He is calm, measured, patient. He is simply doing what needs to be done, being what a self-reliant man should be. There is nothing frantic or desperate about him or his actions.

He is at peace.

Compare him with Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock’s character from “Gravity”).

It’s about age, sure. But it is far, far more than age. The man of “All is Lost” is not so much old and slow as wise and deliberate. Peaceful.

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself,” Emerson said. “The power which resides in him [the man who takes himself as his portion] is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

The time-tested man in the movie trusts himself. He knows who he is and who he is not, what he is capable of and what he is not.

“Trust thyself,” Emerson exhorts. “Every heart vibrates to that iron string. … Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

The only way to live is to be prepared to die. Calm serenity comes through acceptance — of what is in life, of what will come in death. Jesus taught that to find our lives we must lose them. It is only when all is lost that we can truly find –– and what we find is ourselves. When there is no one else, no boat, no radio, no rescue, no raft, no water, no food, no nothing, there is still ourselves. We are what we have and what we have is determined by what we do, what we become. “Be and not seem,” Emerson says. “You are constantly invited to be what you are.”

Be who you are. Become more than you are now. Be prepared when the test comes.

Michael Lister is a writer living in Panama City. More information on him is available at www.MichaelLister.com.